Posts Tagged ‘psa’

10,000 across the country meet to push back against government policies (PHOTOS)

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, October 24th, 2024 - 9 comments

Here are photos of the union protest around the country yesterday.

PSA wins an important case about collective agreements

Written By: - Date published: 4:17 pm, July 18th, 2024 - 3 comments

The PSA just won an important case in the Employment Relations Authority against the Ministry of Education about collective agreements. There are significiant downstream implications to planned layoffs, legal fights, and Nicola Willis’s already tax cut strained budget.

Litigation and equal pay – a history of the 1950’s equal pay campaign

Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, August 28th, 2018 - 3 comments

Forward In 2016 I wrote the below dissertation as part of my History Honours degree at Victoria University.  This dissertation explores the 1950s equal pay campaign, and specifically looks at the Jean Parker Case. Jean Parker was a PSA member employed at IRD, who like Kristine Bartlett 60 years later, won a landmark equal pay legal […]

Keith Ng’s four tax myths

Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, May 25th, 2017 - 23 comments

A useful piece from Keith Ng on myths about tax. It’s an extract from The PSA’s “Progressive Thinking: Ten Perspectives on Tax” booklet.

Translating the local government election jargon

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, September 16th, 2016 - 13 comments

The PSA has produced a nice guide to cut through all the buzzwords in local body elections.

Domestic violence is a work issue

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 1st, 2014 - 88 comments

We can now put a dollar figure – a conservative, probably-underestimated figure – on the cost of domestic violence to New Zealand business. That’s due to a report commissed by the Public Service Association, released yesterday in conjunction with a Member’s Bill from Green MP Jan Logie which will change our law to protect victims […]

Key’s laundry list of broken promises

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 pm, March 14th, 2012 - 57 comments

He must resign. Surely. Here is Key, speaking to the PSA in 2008, making very specific promises about public service jobs, tax cuts, and asset sales that helped him get elected. Promises he has since broken. There’s no excuse. He wasn’t blind-sided by events. He made these promises never intending to keep them. Key is refusing to comment but if the man has any ethics he’ll resign.

PSA launches myth busting campaign

Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, August 2nd, 2011 - 57 comments

The PSA is launching its election campaign this evening.   Our big challenge is to break through the government’s narrative (now reaching  mythic proportions)  that NZ is sinking under debt the likes of Greece  tooand the only solution is to cut public spending and sell assets. As the well informed readers of The Standard know, NZ’s […]

There is power in a union

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, December 10th, 2009 - 7 comments

About a month ago I used the Stats NZ Labour Cost Index to come up with the approximate distribution of payrises for unionised and non-unionised workers. I showed that most union members got payrises this year and most non-union members didn’t. Turns out that was pretty much on the money. The EPMU released figures yesterday […]

Parliamentary staff begin industrial action

Written By: - Date published: 4:23 pm, October 5th, 2009 - 6 comments

Low-level industrial action has begun at Parliament after workers rejected an offer from the employer that would have slashed redundancy provisions and kept pay outside the collective, meaning wage cuts for the foreseeable future. The management is trying to please their political bosses by cutting wages and is looking at outsourcing the provision of security […]

New union blog

Written By: - Date published: 5:03 pm, July 22nd, 2009 - 3 comments

Public Sector Eye. A new blog from the PSA written by the union’s two national secretaries, Brenda Pilott and Richard Wagstaff. Finsec’s been running the gossip for a few years now, but this will be the first blog written by union national secretaries on issues affecting their members. Given current events it should be interesting […]

Public service numbers

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, April 14th, 2009 - 44 comments

I’ve just stumbled across this killer graph from the PSA on public service numbers under Labour and National. It helpfully puts in graphical form what we’ve known all along – that for all the bleating we’ve heard from National and its sycophants about how Labour’s bloated public service was sucking the nation dry, the reality […]

Ralston’s hackery continues

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, March 29th, 2009 - 12 comments

Earlier this week we pointed out that John Key has started running a new line. Now instead of calling touchy-feely liberal policies on things like climate change and public health ‘PC gone mad’ (too Don Brash), National is referring to them as ‘hug a polar bear’ programmes. Right on cue, Key cheerleader Bill Ralston is […]

Third party returns

Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, March 19th, 2009 - 10 comments

The Electoral Commission has released the third party spending returns for the 2008 election campaign and it looks like for all National and ACT’s fears that the $120,000 third party cap would stop groups from being able to express themselves, only the Council of Trade Unions came close with a spend of around $100k. Other […]

Key reneges on PSA promise

Written By: - Date published: 2:13 pm, November 17th, 2008 - 24 comments

Well, just days after a high profile meeting with PSA head Brenda Pilott and a promise to engage with unions John Key has decided to exclude the PSA from his Task Force on the future of the public sector. The National/ACT government will instead appoint private sector consultants and private sector chairs to review government […]

PSA launches campaign

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, September 23rd, 2008 - 33 comments

The PSA’s campaign looks to get past National’s simplistic ‘tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts’ mantra and ask voters to consider what they would have to give up to get larger tax cuts. (full size) Great stuff. Hopefully, they won’t be limiting this campaign to internet and magazine ads. Every kiwi family should get this […]

PSA rips Bagrie report

Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, July 18th, 2008 - 7 comments

Good piece in the Herald yesterday (and the Dom Post the day before) from PSA national sec Richard Wagstaff critiquing ANZ National chief economist Cameron Bagrie’s woeful report on public sector ‘waste’. Wagstaff takes aim at the underlying assumptions of the report about ‘productive’ versus ‘non-productive’ public sector spending, then proceeds to rip through some […]

PSA broadens tax debate

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, June 24th, 2008 - 21 comments

It’s good to see the PSA broadening the public debate on tax cuts with a UMR poll showing the majority of Kiwis don’t want bigger tax cuts if they come at the expense of public services. To summarise: 71% of New Zealanders would prefer to keep taxes at current levels than have higher user charges […]